‘Power Differences’ and ‘the Power of Difference’: The Dominance of Secularism as Ontological Injustice

Abstract

Recent religious studies and international relations scholarship has highlighted secularism as a critical element in dominant modes of identity, power, and exclusion in global politics. Yet, the implications of these insights for global justice theory and practice have rarely been considered. This article suggests that the current dominance of secularism within global justice theory and practice risks undermining the global justice project. Specifically, I argue that secularism's dominance constitutes an ontological injustice, where both alternative non-secular visions of the world and visions of alternative non-secular worlds are subordinated to secular ontologies. However, this argument raises a crucial question: if, despite secularism's claim to neutrality and universality, the dominance of secular ontologies contributes to rather than ameliorates injustice, the question that remains is: what are the alternatives? The article concludes by exploring some preliminary responses to this question.

Secularist understandings of Pentecostal healing practices in Amsterdam: Developing an intersectional and post-secularist sociology of religion

“…It is furthermore very much linked to discussions about the role of religion in the public sphere: by troubling the distinction between religion and the secular, the reasons for keeping religion out of the public domain disappear, thus potentially inaugurating a 'post-secular' public sphere where religious actors can be legitimate partners for conversation, albeit within certain boundaries (Habermas, 2008). This has, however, resulted in a number of criticisms as to whether and to what extent 'post-secular' really moves us beyond frameworks of the secular (Birnbaum, 2015;Pabst, 2012;Wilson, 2017). Arguably, the 'post-secular' is still governed by the same assumptions about what religion is and does that characterize 'secular' approaches.…”

Universal or Particular … or Both? The Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Cross-Cultural Perspective

“…Conversely, it is precisely the difficulty of arriving at a universally agreed upon definition of religion that critics of FoRB point to as evidence of the problematic nature of the right to FoRB. "Religion," they highlight, is a fluid, relatively modern concepta product of the Enlightenment and the emergence of secular ways of thinking that established "religion" as something that can be neatly and cleanly distinguished from other realms of human activity (Asad 2003;Sullivan 2005;Wilson 2012Wilson , 2017Hurd 2015). The idea of "religion" embodied in the right to FoRB, they argue, also emphasizes the individual and cognitive aspects of belief, a highly Westernized, Christian (arguably Protestant) way of conceptualizing religion that does not necessarily resonate across other contexts.…”

Habermas, Islam, and theorizing the “Other”

“…de Vries and Sullivan, 2006; Beckford, 2012) has focused attention on the religion/secular binary, which has a much more contentious history than is often acknowledged (Asad, 2003; Shakman Hurd, 2008, 2015; Mahmood, 2015; Warner, Van Antwerpen, and Calhoun, 2010). Despite careful distinctions that Habermas (2013) and his interlocutors have made regarding, for example, differences between the secular, secularism, and secularization (Casanova, 2013), Habermas has not addressed the ways in which these terms can function as modes of governmentality (Fernando, 2014; Selby, 2014), or what Erin Wilson (2017) has referred to as “secular ontologies,” where, it is argued, secularism is made normative in such a way that models and worldviews that do not fit within its general parameters are deemed regressive in an a priori fashion (see Fallers Sullivan, 2005; Martin, 2017).…”

“…This is where Habermas’s approach strays too closely to the likes of Sam Harris, whose position, I have argued, is an inevitable (if extreme) by-product of any theory that privileges a secular liberal teleology. Accordingly, a more “subversive” approach toward questions of religion in the public sphere might look to highlight the ways in which “religion” is always and already caught up in political, cultural, and economic contexts (Cavanaugh, 2009); how “secularism” today is entangled in neoliberal ideologies (Wilson, 2017); and how secular ontologies, to quote Wilson (1087), attempt “to categorize ‘religion’ as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’” rather than seeks “to engage … with the category ‘religion’ and its various actors and dimensions in contextually sensitive ways.” Yolande Jansen (2011) picks up a similar line of critique in relation to Habermas’s theory of “postsecularism,” arguing that he defines religion in terms of “faith” and alleged “beliefs,” and in this way confuses “religion” with doctrinal authority, which has the consequence of naturalizing a Protestant model as the gold standard for all. This move not only privileges a Eurocentric point of view but also works to classify religious actors that are seemingly unable to meet a liberal democratic ideal in their speech acts as regressive or even akin to fanatics or “fundamentalists” (Sheedy, 2016).…”

“…This is where Habermas's approach strays too closely to the likes of Sam Harris, whose position, I have argued, is an inevitable (if extreme) by-product of any theory that privileges a secular liberal teleology. Accordingly, a more "subversive" approach toward questions of religion in the public sphere might look to highlight the ways in which "religion" is always and already caught up in political, cultural, and economic contexts (Cavanaugh, 2009); how "secularism" today is entangled in neoliberal ideologies (Wilson, 2017); and how secular ontologies, to quote Wilson (1087), attempt "to categorize 'religion' as 'good' or 'bad,' 'progressive' or 'conservative'" rather than seeks "to engage . .…”